Bird Zapper!

Didn’t get enough sleep last night? Feeling groggy? Forget about Red Bull; Namco Bandai has you covered. All you need to lift those sagging eyelids is a quick hit of Bird Zapper, a lightning-fast Match-3 game that won’t blow you away with originality, but will definitely perk you up.

In Bird Zapper you play as an adorable cartoon squirrel who wants nothing more than to listen to music in peace. When the electricity goes out and shuts down his tunes, he pokes his head outside and sees the problem: a huge flock of birds has taken root on the power lines. Obviously, they need to be zapped.

You don’t sell the steak; you sell the sizzle.

Rows of birds glide across the screen at different speeds, and when three or more birds of a kind are lined up, you have to quickly drag your finger over them to shock them out of existence. We imagine that the resulting cloud of smoke smells like chicken.

If that’s all there was to it, this would be a standard ho-hum Match-3 game. But there’s a lot more going on here, some of which– even after playing the tutorial several times– we still don’t fully understand. Loads of special birds will drift onto the screen, some with freezing abilities, some carrying bombs, some with hypnotic eyes or wearing jester hats, some with stars, and some that drop eggs. Occasionally, out of nowhere, the camera will pull back, giving you another row of birds to deal with. It’s all extremely hectic.

…because he is none other than the Shockmaster!

Which isn’t to say it’s not fun. Bird Zapper is fast-paced, zany, and overwhelming, but it’s still enjoyable– even if you don’t understand exactly why everything is happening.

The game has three modes: Survival, Blitz, and Zen. The main mode is Survival, in which you have to keep zapping birds to keep adding time to the timer, to rack up as high a score as possible. Blitz mode gives you a minute to get as many points as you can. Zen mode– a misnomer if ever there was one– lets you play as long as you want. There’s no time limit, but the game is no less crazy.

In addition to keeping you awake, Bird Zapper looks and sounds terrific. It takes some time to get used to the gameplay, and it’s not for the faint of heart, but if you like your puzzlers hectic, Bird Zapper does the trick.

Connect with us

Latest Recommended Games

The fine folks at Milkbag games have released Sidewords. A fun little diversion of a word game that is the devil child of crosswords and scrabble. For each level in the game the grid must be completed to win the level — this means that each letter at the top and side must be used. And not just the top or side, but each word must be made up of letters from the top and side to create a grid. It’s a pain, but in the right kind of way. Even the simplest of the levels can be a head scratcher until you get used to the game. Well worth the $3 as a diversion while we wait for Milkbag to finally release Snow Siege.

We’d like to thank our sponsor for this week, Zap Zap Kindergarten Math.

It’s not always easy to tear your kids away from their tablets and make them do something edifying. Thankfully, Zap Zap Kindergarten Math relieves you of this task by turning mathematics into a fun touchscreen video game. Win win!

Aimed at children 3-6 years old, the app makes math fun by ‘gamifying’ it, turning simple mathematics problems into little challenges so that your pre-schooler can learn and play at the same time.

There are more than two dozen mini-games, split across three categories: Numbers, Shapes and Measurements, and Add and Subtract. According to the developer the difficulty of these puzzles is adaptive too, so kids of any ability can be both encouraged and challenged.

Mini Dayz has launched and it’s a pixelated 2.5D open world that’s as brutal as the desktop version. In this game, the player is dumped on shore with nothing. They must scavenge around for food, water, and weapons while avoiding attack. It’s the kind of game where the goal is to stay alive as long as possible. But that will never be very long. It’s oddly free and seems to only have an ad on the main screen — for now.

Pewter Games has brought their charming point and click adventure The Little Acre to iOS. It’s an amazingly beautiful animated adventure set in a sort of hybrid magical / alien world. A great all ages adventure and very fun.

We’d like to thank our sponsor for this week, The House of Da Vinci by Blue Brain Games. There’s a reason Leonardo Da Vinci is the only renaissance figure who routinely shows up in video games you know. With his remarkable inventiveness and genius for creative problem-solving, Da Vinci was a gamer through and through. He was just born 500 hundred years too soon. Thankfully, there are studios like Blue Brain Games to bring him to life in videogame form. The House of Da Vinci, which comes to us courtesy of a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign, is a puzzler that seeks to channel the artistry and innovation of its title character.

You play as one of Da Vinci’s more promising apprentices, and you have the challenging task of trying to work out where the hell he’s gone. Was he assassinated by the church? Who knows. Has he quietly gone into a retirement? Perhaps. Did he accidentally invent a shrink ray and shrink himself down to the size of an dustmite? Probably not. Da Vinci’s workshop looks beautiful, thanks to some impressive 3D graphics, and the in-game environment is crammed with all the elaborate machines and crazy inventions you’d expect to find in the workplace of a renaissance genius.(more…)

Poly Bridge is out now on iOS, and it’s good to have it! It’s a great game and many seem to agree that it’s the best bridge builder game available. But the iOS versions, so far, is missing the sandbox mode. I would hope that it’s coming soon in an update. If you are all interested in physics puzzlers, grab this one. (Note: the video is for the PC version, I have yet to see a trailer for the mobile version, the developer Dry Cactus isn’t that great at marketing…)

Advertisement

Apple, the Apple logo, Apple Watch, iPad, iPhone, and Apple TV are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. App Store is a service mark of Apple Inc. Other terms may be trademarks of their respective companies.